I

The attitude of mind necessary to a complete enjoyment of the tales in this book must first spring from the realisation that, as stories, they are as different from our own short imaginative fiction as the town of Pescara, on the Adriatic Sea, is different from Marblehead in Massachusetts. It is true that fundamentally the motives of creative writing, at least in the Western Hemisphere, are practically everywhere alike; they are what might be called the primary emotions, hatred and envy, love and cruelty, lust, purity and courage. There are others, but these are sufficient: and an analysis of The Downfall of Candia together with any considerable story native to the United States would disclose a similar genesis.

But men are not so much united by the deeper bonds of a common humanity as they are separated by the superficial aspects and prejudices of society. The New England town and Pescara, at heart very much the same, are far apart in the overwhelming trivialities of civilisation, and Signor D’Annunzio’s tales, read in a local state of being, might as well have remained untranslated. But this difference, of course, lies in the writer, not in his material; and Gabriele D’Annunzio is the special and peculiar product of modern Italy.

No other country, no other history, would have given birth to a genius made up of such contending and utterly opposed qualities: it is exactly as if all the small principalities that were Italy before the Risorgemento, all the amazing contradictions of stark heroics and depraved nepotism, the fanaticism and black blood and superstition, with the introspective and febrile weariness of a very old land, were bound into D’Annunzio’s being.

Not only is this true of the country and of the man, the difference noted, it particularly includes the writing itself. And exactly here is the difficulty which, above all others, must be overcome if pleasure is to result from “Tales of My Native Town.” These are not stories at all, in the sense of an individual coherent action with the stirring properties of a plot. The interest is not cunningly seized upon and stimulated and baffled up to a satisfactory finale. The formula that constitutes the base of practically every applauded story here—a determination opposed to hopeless odds but invariably triumphant—is not only missing from Tales of My Native Town, in the majority of cases it is controverted. For the greater part man is the victim of inimical powers, both within him and about; and fate, or rather circumstance, is too heavy for the defiance of any individual.

What, actually, has happened is that D’Annunzio has not disentangled these coherent fragments from the mass of life. He has not lifted his tales into the crystallised isolation of a short story: they merge from the beginning and beyond the end into the general confusion of existence, they are moments, significantly tragic or humorous, selected from the whole incomprehensible sweep of a vastly larger work, and presented as naturally as possible. However, they are not without form, in reality these tales are woven with an infinite delicacy, an art, like all art, essentially artificial. But a definite interest in them, the sense of their beauty, must rise from an intrinsic interest in the greater affair of being. It is useless for anyone not impressed with the beauty of sheer living as a spectacle to read “Tales of My Native Town.”

II

The clear understanding of a divergence should result in a common ground of departure, of sympathy, and to make this plainer still it ought to be added that in the question of taste, of the latitude of allowable material and treatment, the Italians are far more comprehensive than ourselves. This, certainly, is particularly true in their attitude toward the relation of the sexes; and here is, perhaps, the greatest difference between what might be loosely called a Latin literature and an Anglo-Saxon. We are almost exclusively interested in the results, the reactions, of sexual contacts; but the former have their gaze fixed keenly on the process itself. At the most we indicate that consummations of passion have occurred, and then turn, with a feeling of relief, to what we are convinced is the greater importance of its consequences.

But not only is Gabriele D’Annunzio perfectly within his privilege in lingering over any important, act of nature, he is equally at liberty to develop all the smaller expressions of lust practically barred from English or American pens. These, undeniably, have as large an influence in one country, one man, as in another; they are—as small things are apt to be—more powerful in the end than the greatest attributes. Yet while we have agreed to ignore them, to discard them as ignoble and obscene, in “Tales of My Native Town” erotic gestures and thoughts, libidinous whispers, play their inevitable devastating part.

Yet this is not a book devoted to such impulses; one tale only, although in many ways that is the best, has as its motive lust. It is rather in the amazingly direct treatment of disease, of physical abnormality, that it will be disturbing to the unprepared reader from an entirely different and less admirable, or, at any rate, less honest, convention. Undoubtedly D’Annunzio’s unsparing revelation of human deformity and ills will seem morbid to the unaccustomed mind; but, conversely, it can be urged that the dread of these details is in itself morbid. Then, too, we have an exaggerated horror of the unpleasant, a natural, but saccharine, preference for happiness. As a nation we are not conspicuously happier than Italy, but we clamour with a deafening insistence for the semblance of a material good fortune. Meeting pain no better and no worse than other nations, from our written stories we banish it absolutely; but anyone who cares to realise the beauty that, beyond question, pervades the following pages will be obliged to harden himself to meet precisely the deplorable accidents that he must face wherever life has been contaminated by centuries of brutal ignorance, oppression and want.

Again, it is not in the larger aspects, the nobler phases, of suffering with which we are concerned, but in the cold revelation of rasping details, brutal sores and deformity, the dusty spiders of paralysis. If this were all it would be hideous beyond support; but, fortunately, the coldness is only in the method, there is a saving spirit of pity, the valid humanity born of understanding. Such horror as exists here is the result of D’Annunzio’s sensitive recognition of the weight of poverty and superstition crushing men into unspeakable fatalities of the flesh. A caustic humour, as well, illuminates the darker pits of existence, ironic rather than satirical, bitter rather than fatalistic; and then admirably exposing the rough play of countrymen like the rough wine of their Province. In addition there is always, for reassurance, the inclusion of the simple bravery that in itself leavens both life and books with hope.

III

Yet, with the attention directed so exclusively upon national differences, equally it must be said that no individual has ever written into literature a more minute examination of actuality than that in “Tales of My Native Town.” Indeed, to find its counterpart it would be necessary to turn to the relentlessly veracious paintings of the early Dutchmen, or the anatomical canvasses of El Greco. D’Annunzio’s descriptions of countenances are dermatological, the smallest pores are carefully traced, the shape and hue and colour of every feature. This is set down not only directly but by means of remarkable similies: Binchi-Blanche has a surly, yellow-lined face like a lemon without any juice; Africana’s husband’s mouth resembles the cut in a rotten pumpkin; Ciarole’s face was that of a gilded wooden effigy from which the gilding had partly worn off; while Biagio Quaglia reflected the brilliancy and freshness of an almond tree in springtime.

The direct descriptions are often appalling, since, as has already been indicated, nothing is considered unimportant; there are literally no reservations, or rather, no, prejudices. The physical disintegration that accompanies death is, as well, recorded to the last black clot and bubble of red froth. D’Annunzio is not afraid of death in the context of his pages, he is never reluctant to meet the great facts, the terrible penalties, of existence; rather it is upon them that his writing is founded; it has, in the main, in these tales, two sides, one of violence, of murder and venom, and the other an idyllic presentation of a setting, an environment, saturated with classic and natural beauty.

The mind, now horrified by the dislocated beggars gathered about the blind Mungia, is suddenly swept into the release of evening fragrantly cool like myrtles; or Turlendana returns from his long voyages and, with his amazing animals, makes his way home into Pescara: “The river of his native place carried to him the peaceful air of the sea.... The silence was profound. The cobwebs shone tranquilly in the sun like mirrors framed by the crystal of the sea.” He passes with the Cyclopean camel, the monkey and the she-ass across the boat bridge and: “Far behind the mountain of Gran Sasso the setting sun irradiated the spring sky ... and from the damp earth, the water of the river, the seas, and the ponds, the moisture had arisen. A rosy glow tinted the houses, the sails, the masts, the plants, and the whole landscape, and the figures of the people, acquiring a sort of transparency, grew obscure, the lines of their contour wavering in the fading light.”

Nothing could surpass in peacefulness this vision, a scene like a mirage of fabulous days wrapped in tender colour. Throughout the tale of The Virgin Anna, too, there are, in spite of the vitriolic realism of its spirit, the crystal ecstasies of white flocks of girls before the Eucharist of their first communion. While it was Anna’s father who came ashore from his voyages to the island of Rota with his shirt all scented with southern fruit. The Virgin Anna has many points of resemblance to that other entranced peasant in Une Vie Simple; but Anna had a turtle in place of a parrot, and D’Annunzio is severer with his subject than was Flaubert.

But such idylls are quickly swept away in the fiery death of the Duke of Orfena, with the pistols ringing in high stately chambers, and Mazzagrogna, the major-domo, a dripping corpse, hanging in the railing of a balcony. There is no shrinking, no evasion, here; and none is permitted the reader:—the flames that consume the Duke are not romantic figments, their fierce energy scorches the imagination.

IV

These qualities belong to a high order of creative writing, they can never be the property of mere talent, they have no part in concessions to popular and superficial demands. This does not necessarily imply a criticism of the latter: it is not a crime to prefer happiness to misery, and certainly the tangible facts of happiness are success and the omnipotence of love. Tales and stories exist as a source of pleasure, but men take their pleasures with a difference; and for any who are moved by the heroic spectacle of humanity pinned by fatality to earth but forever struggling for release “Tales of My Native Town” must have a deep significance.

No one has abhorred brutality and deception more passionately than Gabriele D’Annunzio, and no one has held himself more firmly to the exact drawing of their insuperable evils. But this is not all; it is not, perhaps, even the most important aspect: that may well be his fascinating art. Here, above all, the contending elements, of his being, the brilliant genius of the Renaissance, predominate; an age bright with blood and gold and silk, an age of poetry as delicately cultivated as its assassinations. It was a period logical and cruel, lovely and corrupt; and, to an extraordinary degree, it has its reflection in D’Annunzio’s writing.

Yet, in him, it is troubled by modern apprehensions, a social conscience unavoidable now to any fineness of perception. His tales are no longer simply the blazing arbitrary pictures of the Quatrocento; they possess our own vastly more burdened spirit. In this, as well, they are as American as they are Italian; the crimes and beggars and misery of Pescara, the problems and hopes of one, belong to the other; the bonds of need and sympathy are complete.

The tales themselves are filled with energy and movement, the emotions are in high keys. At times a contest of will, of temptation playing with fear, as in The Gold Pieces, they rise to pitched battles between whole towns; the factions, more often than not led by Holy reliques and statues, a sacred arm in silver or the sparkling bust of a Saint with a solar disc, massed with scythes and bars and knives, meet in sanguinary struggle. Or again the passions smoulder into individual bitterness and scandal and mean hatred. The Duchess of Amalfi is such a chronicle, the record of Don GiovÀ’s devastating passion for Violetta Kutufa, who came to Pescara with a company of singers at Carnival.

Nothing is omitted that could add to the veracity, the inevitable collapse, of this almost senile Don Juan; while the psychology of the ending is an accomplishment of arresting power and fitness. There is in The Duchess of Amalfi a vivid presentation of Pescara itself, the houses and Violetta’s room scented with cyprus-powder, the square with the cobblers working and eating figs, a caged blackbird whistling the Hymn of Garibaldi, the Casino, immersed in shadow, its tables sprinkled with water.

Around Pescara is the level sea, the river and mountains and the broad campagnia, the vines, the wine vats and oil presses, the dwellings of mud and reeds; the plain is flooded with magnificent noon, and, at night, Turlendana, drunk, is mocked by the barking of vagrant dogs; the men linger under Violetta’s lighted windows, and the strains of her song run through all the salons, all the heads, of the town.... It is as far away as possible, and yet, in its truth, implied in every heart.

TALES OF MY NATIVE TOWN